A disused railway line – the Belmont Trail

Just over 50 years ago a small branch running off the railway near Harrow closed, and is now much of the line has been converted into a pleasant if seemingly little used walk.

Part of the lack of use as a footpath can probably be put down to the reason why the railway closed down, it doesn’t go from anywhere convenient to anywhere convenient, essentially starting and stopping in the middle of urban housing estates.

The railway ran from Harrow & Wealdstone up to Stanmore Village. Opened in 1890, it was promoted by Frederick Gordon, a hotel owner who had purchased Bentley Priory a few years earlier.

It ran up to Stanmore, but didn’t go as far as the hotelier had wanted, leaving a decent gap to his hotel a mile or so further up the hill. Adding to the eccentricity of the little line, the terminus building at Stanmore was designed to look like a small church. Some old photos here and here

Never much of a success, an intermediate station was opened half way along in 1932 to try and drum up some traffic, but to no avail.

Another factor in its demise was the unfortunate alignment at Harrow and Wealdstone which meant passengers heading into London would have to change trains. This proved fatal when the Metropolitan line opened its own line up to Stanmore, and while that station was further away from the main urban area, the line was far more convenient for commuters.

With the Metropolitan line (now the Jubilee) sucking away what few customers they had, the Stanmore Branch Line stopped carrying passengers in 1952, and closed completely in October 1964 as part of the Beeching cuts.

The tracks were removed a couple of years later.

It is now a footpath, called the Belmont Trail after the intermediate station the old railway used to stop at.

Starting the walk at the Stanmore end, there is nothing left of the old line. The site had kept the old railway station right up to 1969, when following a failed attempt to save it as an art centre and museum, it was sold by Harrow Council for housing.

A modern looking home on the site of the former station carries a sign that it is in fact the old station house – considerably changed and stripped of all its old character.

From here though, the walk starts rather badly, as most of the line is buried under housing and the local golf course, so the only option is a rather boring walk along local roads until you can finally join up with the old railway tracks just off Wemborough Road.

Here at last you get to see something more fitting for an old railway turned into a footpath, a modest cutting lined with back gardens and just wide enough for the single line that used to run here.

I swear that the two chaps who were walking towards me actually slowed down to a crawl when they saw I wanted to take a photo of the empty path.

It’s a modest walk along this otherwise fairly uninteresting pathway when you come across a car park, and this is, curiously, interesting — it’s the site of the intermediate station at Belmont. Situated next to a housing estate and shopping parade, it should have been a success, but wasn’t.

Rebuilding of the station just five years after it opened enabled the single track railway to split into two on either side of the platforms, so that trains could pass each other and increase the capacity of the single track line — an overly optimistic presumption.

It would seem that the station and tracks were lower down than the car park though, as the cutting under the road is far too low for a steam train to have passed through,

The decoration within being completed in 2012 and was created by the artist Alistair Lambert based on paper collages made by a local school. It’s been augmented with graffiti by other so-called artists since then.

The route now carries on squeezing around the backs of houses that have evidently leaked across former railway lines to squash down what’s left to a tiny alleyway.

Not that nice in daytime and probably far less so at night — it does finally mark the end of the less appealing part of the walk and we finally return to something more picturesque.

A wider, occasionally muddy path with just enough wildness to suggest abandonment, and with only a couple of dog walkers and one jogger, it seemed abandoned.

It was also along here though that finally remnants of the old railway can be found — a couple of concrete railway line markers in the overgrown borders that run alongside the local cemetery.

It’s also along here that there’s an indication of the heritage of this otherwise random footpath with small signs suggesting that the Belmont Trail might have a railway history to it.

There is only more patch of railway history though as you near the end of the trail, as the old railway line rises up in an embankment, you might notice that the back gardens facing the railway are lined with old railway sleepers.

In some cases overgrown and rotting, but in some the bushes have been cut back and new fencing erected with a casual disdain for aesthetics that it could almost have been put there by a modern railway operator.

However, eventually the Belmost Trail runs out, at an embankment overlooking the main road. A series of steps, lain of course with railway sleepers is the terminus of the footpath.

The railway itself though ran on, over the road and around the back of old houses onto the mainline railway, where it joined up with the Harrow and Wealdstone station.

Here is one last bit of the line, in the form of an overgrown and empty railway line next to the platforms.

11 comments on “A disused railway line – the Belmont Trail”

I was born in 1959 and was brought up off Locket Road between Wealdstone and Belmont. We never used the Belmont line normally, being in between stops, but I remember seeing the branch DMU at Belmont and at Platform 7 at Harrow & Wealdstone. One day during my second term at Belmont Infants School, I was met by my mother at the school gate; she told me we were going on a special train trip. It was the one and only time I went on the branch train. It was only much later that I realised it must have been the last day of service. The branch service could never have competed with the 18 bus, which not only paralleled the branch, but also the line onwards towards Euston. Other memories of the line are the low bridge over Christchurch Avenue; and the footpath crossing between Vernon Drive and Wemborough Road – I remember being told to look both ways for trains – by that time there was only one goods train a week to and from Stanmore! The road bridge at Belmont was rebuilt and lowered in the 1980s; the pavement immediately outside the last shop on the south side is at the original level.

I used to live in a new build (1992-ish) over the road from the “series of steps, lain with railway sleepers”. The local legend at the time was that the guy living next to the old line at that point gradually moved his garden fence until all the land became his. He sold his house and the land (upon which our new build was built) for a tidy sum.

His wife promptly divorced him and walked away with half of it. He bought a shop on the railway bridge at Harrow and Wealdstone.

I lived in Uppingham Avenue, and my mother used to take us on the ‘Puffing Billy’ from Belmont to Stanmore and back on a Wednesday (half disclosing at Belmont). This must have been before attending infant’s school at Stanburn – so I guess around 1949/50.

When still in steam in the late 40s, train spotting was made a bit more fun by using your penny platform ticket to ride to Stanmore and back. Never got caught. lol. Also remember the steam engine sliding into the station with its wheels locked. Driver said the trains brakes had failed.

I lived in Kenmore Avenue as a child and our garden backed onto the Harrow to Stanmore branch line. Initially a steam tank engine pushed and pulled 2 carriages but later a diesel railcar was used until the lines closure in the mid sixties. A goods train used the line up to Stanmore where there was a Fyffes Bananas warehouse even after the passenger service to Stanmore was stopped. Many a penny was squashed flat on the railway lines by my friends and me as kids. Happy memories.

I lived in Jersey Avenue off the Kenton Lane and worked at British Railways Watford MPD. My free railway pass was from Watford Junction to Belmont(LM). My shifts was varied but I travelled on the branch when ever possible. The last Train (DMU) was driven by driver Charlie Johnson a very jolly chap near retirement. There was a W.H.Smith bookstall on the platform run by a lady. The platform and waiting room was looked after by a lady porter. The booking office had a male clerk manning it. The waiting room was spotless and a fire lite when required.

Born in 1946 I lived at Belmont Circle till 1967. Remember the rattled well.Fowler tanks were the mainstay 40010…40020…40043 but others such as 41320…84002…84004…41901 also worked the branch before diesels arrived. The daily freight was worked by tendered engines and once I saw jubilee 45647 Sturdee near the foot crossing about 1961.I rode on the last train in 1964 and at my home in Luton i have the DROP PENNEY IN SLOT AND SLIDE KNOB from Belmont Stn. I also have a 3ft section of line i retrieved from near the foot crossing whilst the line was being cut up. I can also remember the 230 buses being diverted along Kenmore Ave and Belmont Circle when the bridge in Christchurch Ave was flooded……happy days

I was born in Herga Road 1931.We backed on to the old railway. We moved to Kenton lane near the Duck & the Pond and as kids we would play on the railway putting half pennies on the line to make them into pennies. Daft. My old gran was in the home opposite the Stanmore Station. Married in Uppingham Ave 1953. Happy days